Top Source Claims: iPhone 5 To Have “4-inch Screen and Will Be Announced in June, 2012″

The iPhone 5 News Blog’s exclusive source has just told us today that the iPhone 5 will deliver on a bigger, 4-inch screen, a thinner form factor, and will be announced in June of 2012.
An anonymous source for a top consumer electronics accessories corporation confirmed to the iPhone 5 News Blog today that the iPhone 5 is indeed in the works, will feature an expanded, 4-inch screen, a thinner form factor, and will be announced in June of 2012 — ostensibly at the next World Wide Developers’ Conference (WWDC). The Blog received word that a credible tip was coming last night, and today we were told directly from our source: “It’s going to have a 4″ screen and will be announced in june2012. it will be thinner too… When I hear more, I’ll let you know.”
This is the same source that correctly informed the iPhone 5 News Blog in August of this year that the 2011 iPhone release would in fact be a refresh of the iPhone 4 and keep the same screen size and form factor. That claim was first revealed by our source on August 9th in this article, and then later reaffirmed on August 22nd, and again in the wake of the bogus Case-Mate iPhone 5 publicity stunt that sought to claim the case designer had insider knowledge of the iPhone 5′s new form factor design. In that last claim, our source called the Case-Mate leak “a hoax” and assured us that the next iPhone would be an iPhone 4 refresh.
Our source’s track record proves the veracity of his new claim: he was right about the iPhone 4S, and I believe that he is right about the iPhone 5.
Thinner iPhone 5 + Larger Screen + A6 Processor = More Battery Problems?
Should the iPhone 5 debut as our source is claiming, with a thinner profile, larger screen, and the up-coming A6 processor, should iPhone users be concerned with battery performance? A thinner form factor would mean a thinner battery, and a larger screen and more powerful chip would also place higher demands on the power supply.
And this doesn’t even take into consideration the 4G LTE rumors that claim the iPhone 5 will become Apple’s first 4G LTE smartphone.
It would stand to reason that if Apple intends to roll out a larger screen, thinner design, A6 chip, and 4G LTE on the iPhone 5, we are most likely looking at a revolutionary new battery design. Perhaps this is why Apple chose not to upgrade the battery on the iPhone 4S, keeping their new battery designs under wraps for the 2012 iPhone 5.

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Apple Confirms Battery Drain on iPhone 4S, Promises Software Fix

Early predictions that the iPhone 4S would have battery issues have been proven true by early users’ complaints that the new iPhone doesn’t hold its charge. Apple confirmed today that there’s a glitch; will issue a software update to address the issue.
Since the release of the iPhone 4S, early adopters have been complaining of low battery life, even when running only the most basic apps and services on the phone, such as e-mail and texting. Today, Apple confirmed that the iPhone 4S’s battery is performing badly, and that they will address the issue with a software update, which will curtail excess battery drain.
Apple guru Jim Dalrymple of The Loop confirmed today that Apple had contacted him directly about the issue in order to get the word out to iPhone 4S users that they are aware of the situation and are moving quickly to rectify it: “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” an Apple spokesperson told The Loop. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”
While ” a few weeks” may seem like a lifetime for iPhone 4S users who are suffering from high battery drain, the fact that Apple is addressing the situation so quickly only proves how real the problem is.
Way back on October 6th, the iPhone 5 News Blog was the first tech blog to voice concerns about the battery on the iPhone 4S, noting that by upgrading the processor and operating system, adding Siri, and tweaking the display (a revelation that came later in reporting), but not upgrading the battery, longevity would be a concern for the new iPhone. Much in the same way that iPhone 3Gs users complained of a sluggish battery in light of the 3G’s performance, so too are iPhone 4S users experiencing lethargic battery life compared to the iPhone 4.
Apple’s software update will doubtlessly improve the battery life, as will to some degree the best practices guides and tips out there on  the web. But it remains to be seen if a software update can really make a substantial difference for the iPhone 4S’s battery performance as long as the A5 processor is purring inside of it.

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In Spite of Costs and Speed Issues, Sprint Revels In iPhone 4S Investment

Sprint’s deployment of the iPhone 4S on its network has been incredibly costly and fraught with early technical issues. But in spite of the price tags and tech headaches, getting the iPhone has been a lifesaver for the U.S.’s third-largest carrier.
Almost immediately after it became official that Sprint was getting the iPhone, skeptics began handicapping how long and to what degree Sprint would fail at offering high quality services for the iPhone 4S, and balking at the deal that Sprint had to cut with Apple to land the iPhone product line. But in the end, getting the iPhone 4S and accompanying iPhone 4 has been — for the short-term at least — a net win for Sprint.
Speaking on the matter, Sprint CEO Dane Hesse commented that their deal with Apple to secure the iPhone has been ”worth every penny,” and that the iPhone’s real value is not simply its high-profile in the marketplace, but rather how the iPhone performs on Sprint’s data network, which is turn is solidifying the company’s ability to continue offering its industry-leading unlimited data plan.
Hesse explains: “One of the beauties of carrying the iPhone is it extends the period of time and increases the likelihood of us maintaining unlimited data longer because it uses our network so efficiently.” And analysts are confirming what Hesse is saying: the iPhone 4S consumes approximately 50 percent less data compared to its Android competitors.
Sprint has a large nut to crack when it comes to the iPhone 4S: their deal with Apple requires them to purchase 30.5 million iPhones from Apple over the next four years, and they are paying almost 40% more for each handset. But the value for Sprint is how the iPhone 4S is onboarding new customers, and plugging up the loss of customers to AT&T and Verizon for not having the iPhone in the past. Hesse confirmed this by commenting: “Our early results selling the iPhone and iPhone 4 confirm the iPhone’s ability to attract new customers.”
Even if Sprint’s profit margin on iPhone sales pales in comparison to AT&T and Verizon, their ability to bolster their subscriber numbers will be a major windfall for them over the long term.

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No Siri On iPhone 5 — Is the iPhone 4S Apple’s

Siri has quickly become the defining feature on the iPhone 4S. But a new article suggests that the iPhone 5 could feature a next-generation assistant that will replace Siri. Is the iPhone 4S looking more and more like a testing ground for future Apple mobile technologies?
If you’re loving Siri on your iPhone 4S, it might be both the first and last iPhone iteration to feature it. A new report from CP suggests that Apple may intend to replace Siri as soon as 2012 on the iPhone 5: ”The next Apple iPhone is expected to receive a complete revamp, with updates to both its software and external chassis. Industry experts speculate that this could also mean an update for the artificial intelligence system, Siri. . . Apple has stated that the program is meant to be exclusive to the 4S.”
That last statement is particularly crypic: when Apple says that iPhone 4S is the “most ordinary means” for running Siri, it is clear that they want to ensure that users do not exploit the ability to port Siri functionality onto the iPhone 4. Because, let’s face it: Siri is really the defining feature that makes the iPhone 4S different from the iPhone 4. While the A5 processor is indeed fast, both iPhones can run iOS 5, and both look essentially the same. It takes Siri to really sell the iPhone 4S, and so Apple is making sure to brand Siri as a proprietary component of the 4S.
But CP is also inferring that Siri’s primary purpose is to sell the 4S, and that by the time the iPhone 5 comes along, there will be a bigger, better assistant-like technology that will quickly replace Siri: “Experts suggest that if Siri is an iPhone 4S exclusive, that Apple may have more plans for the virtual personal assistant, for future generations of iPhones.”
Given the fact that the iPhone 5 is expected to sport a brand-new form factor, larger screen, the A6 chip, and even possibly an iOS 6 operating system, it isn’t impossible to imagine that even Siri could get an upgrade. We’ve already written about the prospect of Siri getting smarter and more interactive in the future, since it seems to work much like a search engine algorithm. But the idea of seeing Siri come and go on just the iPhone 4S begin to raise the specter of Apple’s newest iPhone iteration being a kind of “guinea pig,” testing the market for Siri-like features and the performance of the iOS 5 operating system.
This isn’t to say that the 4S experience has been disappointing for everyone: new iPhone users and those upgrading from the iPhone 3G and 3Gs are enjoying the speed, performance, and novelty of what the new iPhone has to offer. But if the speculation turns out to be true and the iPhone 5 will make its debut as early as the 2012 WWDC, the iPhone 4S could turn out to be a perceived rest stop on the way towards a serious overhaul for the iPhone franchise.

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Large-Screen iPhone 5 In Time For New Multi-Touch, 3D Apple Paten

Apple’s new multi-touch 3D patent reveals a next-generation approach to gesture control that is featured on the iPad in schematics. But Apple’s new focus on this technology could also involve increasing the screen size of the iPhone 5 as well.
In an article this week, PCWorld took a close look at a fascinating new Apple patent that could dramatically revolutionize the gesturing experience on mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone. Writer Eric Mack explains: “The focus of the patent is gesturing by making motions with the fingers across a multi-touch screen, but it also mentions 3-D gesturing using a device’s front-facing camera. This could bring technology similar to that employed in the Microsoft Kinect to iOS devices.”
In layman’s terms, Mack associates the new patent to the same investigative tools employed by Tom Cruise’s character in the landmark film The Minority Report. Ever since that film was released, its sci-fi depiction of fluid, holographic-based gesture control has set the bar for what tech users hope the consumer electronics industry will someday develop.
In the patent, Apple is clearly using the iPad as its vehicle for this kind of new technology, most likely imagining that the 9.7-inch screen dimensions of its tablet device. But it would stand to reason that Apple will continue to strive to create parity between the iPad and iPhone — I expect Siri to make its debut on the iPad 3. In the same way, there is no reason to believe that Apple will not equip the iPhone with the same breakthrough gesture controls as the iPad in the years and models to come.
In this way, I can imagine more justification that the iPhone 5 will feature a larger screen.
Many iPhone enthusiasts believe that the long-running larger screen rumor for the iPhone 5 will eventually come true by virtue of users calling for it. I argue, however, that Apple is not committed to increasing the size of the iPhone’s screen simply to compete with the likes of top-tier Android smartphones; they will need a better reason than that to beef up the size of the screen.
But a revolutionary new 3D approach to multi-touch gesturing could be a worthwhile justification.
Bear in mind that this new multi-touch gesturing patent is unlikely to show up on the iPhone 5 — patents can take years to develop and implement. However, if this patent reveals the direction that Apple is moving in from a design perspective, it would stand to reason that bumping up the screen size of the iPhone could be just around the corner.

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iPhone 4S’s Siri Is a Search Engine, Will Compete With Google Search

If you’ve already invested in the new iPhone 4S, chances are you’re most excited about its top gadget: Siri. To be sure, Apple has touted Siri above all of the other new features on the iPhone 4S, including a much-enhanced camera array, as well as a bevy of improved hardware features that Apple has chosen to downplay into order to highlight the software side of its latest iPhone iteration. There’s no doubt that those early images of the guy jogging with his iPhone and having Siri shuffle his appointments is something right out of depictions of the future.
Of course, there is plenty that Siri cannot do, and it hasn’t taken long for the wise guys of the tech media to point them out. Fortunately for Siri, it cannot have its feelings hurt or intelligence insulted.
Yet.
In spite of its limitations, Siri is proving to be much more than simple voice recognition software. It does exhibit an intelligence; a flexibility to understand connotation and meaning that up until this point has been non-existent in the consumer end of voice recognition (who knows what the military may have). And the way that Apple is achieving this is not via a simple app, but rather through similar technologies used by Google’s own search algorithms.
As a result, I think that, with Siri, Apple just got into the search business and will be looking to go head to head against Google Search in the decades to come.
Tom’s Hardware has a comprehensive article on all of the new hardware upgrades for the iPhone 4S (thanks to Core2 for sending it to me). You’ll be surprised to see how much hardware is actually improved, from the battery to the screen, camera, video and beyond. But what I found most interesting was their in-depth look into how Siri works. I was shocked at how similar it is to Google Search.
Writer Andrew Ku explains: “. . . we should clarify that Siri isn’t just an app. Provided you’re asking questions and not giving commands, Siri is a service that interfaces with Apple’s servers to find a response. As such, the ‘intelligence’ behind Siri may change over time as the company optimizes its code.” In other words, just as Google regularly tweaks its algorithm — this year, they have rolled out several “Panda” updates in order to provide better search results to users — so too will Apple update its own search algorithms to make Siri more intuitive when you ask it something.
Ku goes on to explain that, like Google, Siri is all about processing keywords and keyword phrases: “Whenever you ask a question, Siri checks to see if it contains a keyword. This list of keywords only takes precedence over general syntax rules when Siri doesn’t recognize the string of words as a question. A given keyword sets off a function like looking up the weather. So far, we’ve worked out that this list includes: clothing, weather, food, restaurants, hospital, and clinic.” Granted, that is still a limited list, but in fact, those six categories are key search terms for mobile users, and will provide Apple with a basis for greatly expanding its search results capabilities in the very near future.
Where Siri still lags behind Google is in extrapolating sentence syntax and structure. Whereas Google Search has the ability to adjust to various syntax typed into the search box, Siri is still somewhat rigid in how you have to talk to it in order to get sensible results. Ku explains: “Syntax matters a lot. I’ve spent the better part of a day experimenting, and Siri definitely prefers the English standard of subject/verb/object, as opposed to object/subject/verb or object/verb/subject. Basically, don’t talk like Yoda. Questions, commands, or statements that contain extra or unessential words confuse Siri.”
But this shouldn’t be seen as an oversight or clumsy limitation overlooked by the Apple developers. In fact, it is a result of a much more sophisticated process that Apple is using to fetch search results with Siri: whereas Google Search benefits from you inputting the search keywords and criteria, Siri appears to be more of a two-step process, where the front end processes whether or not the voice request is a command or request, and then routes that request either to a proprietary response mechanism or to a search algorithm.
Where Is Apple Getting Its Search Results From?
I have no doubt that Apple intends Siri to become a search standard for the tech mobile community. They will be sure to keep it proprietary and heavily patented, and go after Google as soon as they try to improve their own voice recognition to mirror what Siri is already doing. As a result, I think that Apple has just gotten into the search business without actually saying that they’ve gotten into it. While many people would have expected Apple to develop an internet-based search engine like Google or Yahoo, instead, they have essentially hidden their search engine behind Siri.
Or, maybe we can simply assume that Siri is a search engine.
But I will end this article with a question: where is Siri getting its search results from? Apple has not to my knowledge admitted to building a Google, Yahoo, or Bing-like search engine, and yet Siri behaves like a search engine when it provides keyword-based results. We know that they are not tapping directly into google, since google would have already let us know about that if it were the case. The only assumption left is that Apple has its own search engine behind the scenes.

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New iPhone 5 Renderings Deliver On Larger Screen, Home Button

Designer Antonio De Rosa’s new iPhone 5 renderings offer a solid guess at what the next iPhone 5 could look like.
The iPhone 5 rumor mill is never lacking in renderings and mock-ups. And because the rumor mill has essentially been reset as a result of the iPhone 4S release in October, consumers won’t have to worry about renderings being passed off as real prototype sightings: everything we’ll see over the next few months will be nothing more than conceptual sketches from outside sources.
That being said, graphic designer Antonio de Rosa, who has posted some impressive renderings in the past for the iPhone 5, has just released a new batch of iPhone 5 renderings that are in keeping with Apple’s aesthetics while delivering on all of the top-tier rumored features for the next iPhone: larger screen, enhanced home button, and aluminum unibody.
De Rosa’s renderings are based on a 4.3-inch screen that is almost what you’d call “edge to edge,” as well as the elongated home button, which many believed would debut in 2011 and feature some kind of sophisticated gesture control upgrade. De Rosa also imagines the all-metal body to be of “unibody” construction, thanks to groundbreaking “LiquidMetal” technology, which many believe will also debut on the iPhone 5.
In spite of the smooth, sleek lines, some argue that De Rosa’s renderings for the iPhone 5 are too much in line with the latest batch of top-tier Android smartphones. MobileMag argues: “I don’t know about you, but the stretched out iPhone 5 is starting to look a fair bit like the Android superphones that are out there with their 4+ inch displays. Something like the HTC EVO 4G (sorta, but not really). The edge to edge display looks nice, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of that grey-ish curved back.”
I tend to agree with MobileMag‘s general observation, particularly as it relates to the larger screen size on the iPhone 5. While many are calling for capacious new screen dimensions on the next iPhone, there’s no doubt that taking the iPhone 5′s screen size up to similar dimensions of the HTC EVO 4G and other Android smartphones will by default bring the design more in line with Android; a larger screen design will essence put to rest a design paradigm that has been quintessentially “iPhone” for years now. In this way, iPhone users calling for a 4+ inch screen better be ready for an iPhone that resembles more of an Android form factor.
Another interesting design characteristic of De Rosa’s renderings is the curved back. MobileMag comments, “. . . I’m not sure I’m a fan of that grey-ish curved back.” I, too, have misgivings about an overly curvacious back to the iPhone 5, which I have expounded on in another article. While the curved back might feel nicer in the palm of one’s hand, the balance and stability of a flat, square back is ultimately a more reliable design for today’s busy smartphone user.
All of this being said, De Rosa has effectively started the conversation again about what the iPhone 5 will look like, and how it might come to debut ner, groundbreaking features.

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